A Social Vulnerability Ranking System of Municipalities in Mexico for

Crime Prevention
Hector Flores-Ramirez
Problem and Project Strategy
Mexico has undergone a severe violence crisis since 2008, which initiated two years after
the beginning of President Felipe Calderon had begun his administration. Critics of
Presidents Calderon administration claim that this coincidence was not fortuitous. In
fact, some experts argue that it was the security policy agenda of President Calderon that
might have escalated the violence crisis that would further increase in the next years
(Guerrero, 2011). According to this argument, by directly confronting drug cartels and
capturing top drug kingpins, the Federal Police, the army and the marines, would have
provoked intestine wars in drug cartels.
Even though this seems like a plausible argument, it is still unclear if in fact the
Calderons security policy was directly responsible for exacerbating violence, especially
drug related, and, if so, to what extent. In any case, by the end of Calderons term, critics
and the society at large in Mexico was expecting a major revamp of the security policy as
a way to bring peace back to the country. When President Enrique Pena Nieto, elected in
2012, presented his policy platform, he introduced the National Program for the Social
Prevention of Crime and Violence (from now on, the Program) as a symbol of his
administrations commitment on a new security agenda.
By allocating funding and resources to municipalities regarded as socially vulnerable, as
will be discussed below, this Program intends to address some of the deeper causes of
violence and crime in Mexican municipalities. From the start, the government announced
that 4 tiers of priority municipalities would be selected in order to progressively roll up
this Program (see Figure 1). In particular, the first tier would be composed by 57
municipalities (out of the almost 2,400 in the country) that were deemed to be socially
vulnerable and prone to extreme violence and crime dynamics. The other tiers would be:
the next 43 priority municipalities, yet another 251 municipalities, and finally national
level interventions including all municipalities. Despite the publicity and focus given to
the Program and the selected municipalities, no public data nor methodology was made
available. This fueled critics of Pena Nietos security policy and brought back long held
concerns of the federal government selecting municipalities by political and electoral
criteria and not in terms of technically reliable criteria, as the program intended.
Strangely enough, the data and methodology for the selection of the second tier, 43
municipalities, was actually made public after NGOs explicitly requested the information
to the federal government. The methodology was simple and the data included social
vulnerability data (like the percentage of the population in poverty or percentage of
households with female head) and two crime variables, namely, the number of (first-

degree) homicides and violent robberies per 100 thousands inhabitants (Mexico Evalua,
2014: 14).

FIGURE 1. The four tier intervention areas of the National Program for the Social Prevention of
Crime and Violence

Source: Bases del Programa Nacional para la Prevencion Social de la Violencia y la Delincuencia, 2012

Given the fact that no public available data nor methodology exists for the top 57
municipalities but they do for the next 43, my research project was simple. I used the
methodology and data for the second tier and applied to all municipalities in Mexico with
population above 100 thousand (this was actually the only know criteria for the 57 top
municipalities) which amounts to around 200 municipalities out of a little over 2,400. My
findings are not conclusive and further research is needed, but by replicating the data and
methodology as explained below, only 22 out of the top 57 municipalities of my own
ranking matched the official selection. This amounts to almost 40% of the municipalities.
The matching percentage suggests that there is some consistency behind the official
selection of the top 57 municipalities and the social vulnerability and crime data used to
select other municipalities. That is, the selection was clearly not made and random and
complies with some basic analysis of these variables. However, my findings are not
conclusive and do not test, for example, for the correlation between the selected
municipalities and other relevant variables, like electoral data or political data. For
example, it would be interested if the political affiliation of the municipal government or

upcoming elections (state or municipal) are somehow related to the selection of a

municipality as part of the Program. This is a relevant research area given the past history
of political misuse of the federal programs to gain electoral support in socially vulnerable
or remote areas in Mexico.
Data and Software
For my research, I used mostly Python and Excel, and a little bit of GeoDa. The data, as I
detail below, closely matches the data used for the selection of the second tier 43
municipalities, as I originally intended. I used Excel mostly for data wrangling, because
the Mexican government tends to use it to distribute its open data. This was a very
painful process as the data is not usually machine readable and a lot of manual processing
needs to be done. Additionally, the data tends to be distributed in many sources of very
uneven quality.
I used Python, and specifically the Pandas and Numpy libraries to conduct the actual
statistical analysis and the score that I explain below. Finally, I used ArcGIS and GeoDa to
conduct basic spatial exploratory analysis. However, I was not able to include these
analysis in my research paper given time restrictions. It is relevant to notice, however,
that this analysis suggests the importance of conducting spatial analysis further to
investigate the research and policy implications of spatial social vulnerability and crime
clusters.
All the data I used is at the municipal level and was obtained from the three main
following sources:

National Statistics and Geography Institute (INEGI, in Spanish)

National Social Policy Evaluation Council (CONEVAL, in Spanish)
National System for Public Security Executive Secretariat

As referenced above, the score by which the second tier municipalities were ranked
included both social vulnerability data and crime data. I explain the methodology in more
detail below, but for now this is the list of data I actually used in my own score (again, all
at the municipal level):
Social Vulnerability Data
Gini Index, CONEVAL, 2010
Percentage of the Population in Poverty Situation, CONEVAL, 2010
Percentage of the Population in Social Vulnerability Situation, CONEVAL, 2010
Percentage of the Population Without Access to Basic Services, CONEVAL, 2010
Schools per 100 Thousand Inhabitants, INEGI 2010
Mean Number of School Years, INEGI, 2010
Drop Out Rate in Secondary School, INEGI, 2010

Population Growth Rate between 2005 and 2010, INEGI, 2010

Density (inhabitants per Km2), INEGI, 2010
Percentage of the Population between 15 and 29 Years Old, INEGI, 2010
Percentage of Households with a Female Head of Household, INEGI, 2010
Percentage of the Population in Vulnerable Living Conditions, CONEVAL, 2010
Car Accidents in Urban and Suburban Areas per 100 Thousand Inhabitants,
INEGI, 2010

Crime Data
First-grade homicides per 100 Thousand Inhabitants, National System for Public
Security Executive Secretariat, 2013
Violent Robberies per 100 Thousand Inhabitants, National System for Public
Security Executive Secretariat, 2013
There was some data that was used in the methodology by the government and that I did
not include either because it was not publicly readily available (unless requested to the
government) or I could not manage to get it ready to perform analysis at the municipal
level. These data is the following:

Drop Out Rate in High School, INEGI, 2010

Total Dependency Ratio, INEGI, 2010
Percentage of the Population that Was Not Born In The Same State Than That Of
Current Residency (at the municipal level), 2010
Percentage Of Population 5 Years And Older, In 2010, That Was Not Living In The
State In Which They Were Born (at the municipal level), INEGI, 2010
Percentage of Unipersonal Households, INEGI, 2010
Unemployment Rate (As A Percentage Of The Economically Active Population) 12
Years Or Older, INEGI, 2010

Even though it would have been desirable to include this data in my own score, I believe
that the data I is strong enough to capture some of the relevant information that the
missing data might have provide.
Methodology
As detailed above, the selection of the top 57 municipalities was done based on social
vulnerability and crime data. It is important to emphasize that the selection of the top 57
municipalities was actually done only among the municipalities that had 100 thousand
inhabitants or more (or those that were expected to have the same population level by
2015). This narrowed down the set of municipalities to choose to about 204 municipalities
from a total of approximately 2,400.

The way the score was built was by assigning a weight of 50% to two components: the
social vulnerability and the crime components. The specific social vulnerability data is
listed above, and for the crime data only the first-grade homicides and violent robberies
per 100 thousand inhabitants (2013) were used. The social vulnerability component was
composed by 13 variables and, again, the crime component by 2. Each of the variables
within both components had an equal weight: that is, each of the 2 crime variables
accounted for 25 points of the overall score (in a scale from 0 to 100), whereas each of the
14 variables accounted for 3.8 points.
For both components, the mean of each variable was calculated (see Figure 2) Once the
mean per variable was calculated, each entry was assigned a 1 if the value was above the
mean or 0 if it was below. For example, the mean for the municipal percentage of
population in poverty was 35%. If, like in the case of the municipality of Aguascalientes in
the state of Aguascalientes, the population was below that threshold, it would be assigned
a 0.
Figure 2. Means of the Social Vulnerability and Crime Data

Once the data base had been reclassified in this way, each data entry in the social
vulnerability component would account for 3.8 points (out of 100 total points) if it had
been classified as 1 (above mean value) or 0 points if it has been below the mean value. In
the crime component, the values above the mean would account for 25 points each (out
of 100 total points). These score allowed us to rank all 204 municipalities that had more
than 100 thousand inhabitants in 2010. As can be seen in Figure 3, most of the
municipalities had a total score between 30 and 50 points.

Figure 3. Histogram of Social Vulnerability Scores of Municipalities in Mexico >

1000 Thousand Population in 2010

Findings and Results

As detailed above, after building my own score I found out that 22 out of 57
municipalities were included both in my self-made social vulnerability ranking and the
one produced by the government for the Program. This amount to around 40% of the
total municipalities (see Figure 4). This result suggests that the selection of the top 57
municipalities was not made at random and that is probably coherent with social
vulnerability and crime conditions in Mexican municipalities. However, further research
is needed in order to conclude the appropriateness of the Program final selection for the
first tier of municipalities in which to intervene.
In particular, it would be important to include electoral and political affiliation data in
order to test for the correlation between, for example, the political party to which the
municipal executive power belongs and the inclusion in the Program or, for example, the
correlation with the proximity of elections at the municipal or state level. As I said above,
this is especially true given the concerns on the politically and electorally biased use of
federal programs in Mexico in the past and even today.

Figure 4. List of Matching Municipalities in both Official and Self-Made Social

Vulnerability Ranking (Municipality, State, Score)

Next Steps
Overall, there remain major questions concerning the appropriateness of the
methodology used to build the Program social vulnerability score (and my own). Given
the construction of the index, there is a tendency to diminish the variability within the
municipalities, as all values are ultimately normalized and classified as 0 and 1. This might
have confounding effects in the way the final score is produced. It is also not clear why
each one of the variables in the social vulnerability component or crime component
should be equally weighted. It can be argued, for example, that the percentage of young
population (between 15 and 29 years) is much more relevant the normalized number of
car accidents in urban or suburban areas. This clearly impact the final score and no
analytical basis is provided to justify this decision.
Many other concerns come to mind, but the most obvious is the spatial scale. It is not
clear that the municipal level is the most adequate spatial unit in which to study social
vulnerability and crime data. It is known that these characteristics can be very diverse at
smaller units of analysis, like at the census tract or neighborhood level. This is relevant
not only from a research perspective but also from a policy perspective, as the allocation
of resources is not necessarily the most effective if distributed at the municipal level.

References
Confederacion Nacional de la Republica Mexicana, Demarcaciones Prioritarias del
Programa para la Prevencion Social de la Violencia y la Delincuencia, 2013
Gobierno de la Republica, Programa Nacional Para la Prevencion Social de la
Violencia y la Delincuencia, 2014-2018, Diario Oficial de la Federacion, 2014
Gonzalo Suarez, Programa Nacional para la Prevencion Social de la Violencia y la
Delincuencia, Excelsior, 2013
Guerrero, Eduardo, Security, Drugs and Violence in Mexico: A Survey, 7th North
American Forum, Washington DC, 2011.
Mexico Evalua, Prevencion: Dnde quedo la evidencia?, 2014.
Mexico Evalua, Prevencion: No que queran prevenir la violencia?, Animal Politic,
2014.

Appendix
Appendix 1. View of the social vulnerability and crime data base for Mexican
municipalities

Appendix 2. View of the final ranking of Mexican municipalities according to Social

Vulnerability Score